A Good Story Worths More than an Old Trumpet

Rating: 8/10 (21 March 2010)

After the Second World War, the American musician Max Tooney (Pruitt Taylor Vince) comes to a pawn shop to sell his trumpet and asks to play one last song with the instrument. The shopkeeper (Peter Vaughn) puts an old record with the same song to play, and Max asks him where he found it since it is an unreleased unique song. He tells that he bought a piano from a scrapped ship and found the pieces of the record inside the piano. Max tells that on January, 1st 1900, the stoker Danny Boodmann (Bill Nunn) of the Steamship "Virginian" finds a baby boy over the piano of the first class in a cradle carved T.D. Lemon and he decides to keep the child. He gives the name of Danny Boodmann T.D. Lemon Nineteen Hundred and raises the child in the boiler room of the passenger ship. Years later, an accident kills Danny Boodmann and the boy leaves the boiler room for the first time and discovers that he is a natural born pianist. When Max is hired to play trumpet in the ship, he becomes a close friend of 1900 (Tim Roth) and witness his life, including the duel with the arrogant "man who had invented the jazz" Jelly Roll Morton (Clarence Williams III) and when he falls in love for a girl (Mélanie Thierry) and almost leaves the vessel in New York. When Max left the ship on August, 21st 1933, he lost contact with 1900. Now he decides to go to the junkyard and find his missing friend. In the end, a good story worths more than an old trumpet.
"La Leggenda del Pianista Sull'Oceano" is a sensitive, poetic and tragic fantasy about music, missing love and friendship, with magnificent direction of Giuseppe Tornatore; top-notch performances of Tim Roth and Pruitt Taylor Vince; and haunting music score of Ennio Morricone. The cinematography, costume design and art direction are wonderful and the dialogs are intense and delightful. This film was released in Brazil on VHS in the 90's by Warner, but deserved at least a DVD. My vote is eight.
Title (Brazil): "A Lenda do Pianista do Mar" ("The Legend of the Pianist of the Sea")